Taking Linux On The Road With Ubuntu

Zebrahead writes "Tom's Hardware has a nice review of the Ubuntu H2. How about storing your operating system, including some applications, on a highly mobile device? This is exactly what the Ubuntu H2 was designed for. In theory, the Ubuntu H2 package can be run on virtually any computer that has at least one empty USB port. A tiny 1" hard drive with 3 GB capacity was teamed up with the Debian-based Linux distribution Ubuntu. Bundling a tiny storage device with a fully-featured open source operating system enables the user to take a system installation, all its settings and applications, and a limited amount of data with him. It would be great to take this pretty interesting product to an Internet café, a computer at a friend's location, or any other system you can think of."

Comments

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[punkdigerati]

I believe the Tiny was in reference to the one inch size, not the capacity.

Gotta Love Ubuntu

[JoeShmoe950]

I think this is a great concept, and I must say, I love ubuntu, but what about hardware conflicts. Not just with ubuntu, but with Linux in general, i've always had trouble with the combination of a PCI GeForce and integrated graphics conflicting. This can be a real pain. Any solution for thigns like this?

Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu

[arkhan_jg]

Depends what you're trying to do. If you only want the PCI geforce working, your best bet is simply to disable the onboard graphics in the BIOS.

If you wanted both onboard and PCI graphics card to work (in some form of xinerama setup), set the PCI card to be the default display device in the BIOS, as opposed to AGP (most onboard video chips are classed as AGP devices in the BIOS). A number of PCI graphics cards aren't happy unless they're the first video device to be initialised.

Once you've got the card running, you can use either the opensource nv driver that ships as part of Xorg, or you can use the closed source drivers from nvidia that are custom compiled for your distro. You need the closed-source licenced drivers to do 3D-acceleration properly, but for basic 2D work the nv drivers are fine. Depends on your distro how best to do this - ubuntu does have support for the closed-source drivers, but I believe it's a bit of a pain to get working.

As part of the wider picture though, I've always been amazed by the hardware-detection and support on linux LiveCDs (or indeed, the H2). Given the lack of co-operation from hardware manufacturers, the amount of machines that work perfectly well 'out of the box' (i.e. without manually installing drivers) is much higher than windows XP; sata drive support, for example.

Re:Gotta Love Ubuntu

[RAMMS EIN]

``Depends on your distro how best to do this - ubuntu does have support for the closed-source drivers, but I believe it's a bit of a pain to get working.''

I did this on someone else's box recently, and it's actually a matter of just installing the right package (from Synaptic).

Internet Cafe

[Sinus0idal]

Ok, but which correctly configured public machines (schools, uni's, internet cafes etc) are going to let you boot from a usb device? Allowing booting from other media can create havoc for admins.

Re:Internet Cafe

[halcyon1234]

Ok, but which correctly configured public machines (schools, uni's, internet cafes etc) are going to let you boot from a usb device? Allowing booting from other media can create havoc for admins.

Actually, this could be one of the best things to happen to network admins in a long time. Right now, a network admin has to spend ungodly amounts of time going to local machine after local machine to install patches, fix registry errors, change /etc settings... or to run ghost floppies to restore the machine... or to set up remote scripts to do any or all of the above automatically. Basically, a royal crapton of time is spent on local OS maintenance.

If the admin were to just yank out the internal hard drive, and set the boot order to "USB / CDROM / FLOPPY", their lives become much easier. Instead of "Here's a huge list of things you are not allowed to do on the computers because it might ruin our installed OS", they can just say "Hey, do whatever you want. It's your own OS. If you muck it up, you have to fix it."

It will suddenly create two new markets as well. First, people who fix portable OS installs will see a resurgance of business. (As always, those of us who know better can just drop the 2.5GB backup of the OS image we have on our home machine back onto the USB key). Second, it will create a great secondary market for 10GB hard drives. Why bother spending the extra $100+ on a huge hard drive for a machine if it isn't needed? Just put a small hard drive in each machine that the user can mount for swap space. (I know that ever company I've worked for has had a gigantic stack of unused 2GB - 4GB hard drives in their storage closets).

Re:Internet Cafe

[jacksonj04]

Won't work. Companies and schools (at least in the UK) are accountable for what is done on their networks. Just having dumb terminals doesn't help this.

For schools especially, all internet access must be monitored, and schools in Leeds (Which ain't a small city) use an individual-user-login based service. This means a proxy server, and most kids wouldn't know what a proxy server was if it came up and slapped them in the face.

I'd love to be able to run a portable distro in school, but at the moment it's just not feasable. Even our own laptops have to be forced through the proxy to do anything useful.

Re:Internet Cafe

[halcyon1234]

For schools especially, all internet access must be monitored, and schools in Leeds (Which ain't a small city) use an individual-user-login based service. This means a proxy server, and most kids wouldn't know what a proxy server was if it came up and slapped them in the face.

Much the same in Canada, but that doesn't mean it won't work. As an example, I go to Seneca College. In order to use any of their PCs, you have to log into them with your college username/password. OR, if you bring in your own computer (ie: a laptop with wifi), and try to get any outside access, then you must still log in. The system automatically redirects any outside requests to a login screen. Once you authenticate, then it will let you outside. So there is still some level of security. (And, as we all know, if someone is truly determined to Do Bad Things, they'll find a way).

Re:Internet Cafe

[ctr2sprt]

It's feasible. Think of it like this. Clearly the computing labs aren't trusted, or you wouldn't have to authenticate and the schools wouldn't have to regulate or monitor your traffic. Students are trying to get to computers which are trusted, namely the proxy and other internal servers. So what do you usually use to go from an untrusted network to a trusted one? A VPN. It'll handle authentication and do encryption to boot. As an added bonus, it can be set up to allow connections from the wider Internet as well, so students can access class materials and such from home and not just the public labs.

It will require students to install VPN clients on their "mobile OSes," but I don't think that's an unreasonable demand to make.

Re:Internet Cafe

[dotgain]

Nope, none of my users have *ever*heard* of a transparent proxy.

*chuckles*

Good for librarians too...

[macguys]

I've been following the issues that many librarians have with having to be part of government snooping of internet logs on their patrons. By using Linux live distros like Ubantu, this problem seems to go away. If the snoops want to snoop, they can do so further upstream and not involve the librarians.

Of course, I fully expect a new law that makes USB ports on public computers illegal.

Other Distros?

[n0dalus]

Does this device work with other distros too?

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[Homology]

A 3GB drive is decidely un-tiny.

Indeed, but when the article suggest to put install applications like OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox along with Evolution and rest of the Gnome desktop, you sure need those 3GB. Perhaps the reviewer was refering to the physical size of the drive as small ;-)

Re:3GB == Tiny?

[halcyon1234]

A 3GB drive is decidely un-tiny.

I don't agree. Physically, it's the same size as any other USB key. Smaller, even, since it is newer. In the grand scheme of things, a 3GB USB pen vs. 250GB internal HDD is very tiny.

SLOOOW....

[yourexhalekiss]

4400 RPM Hard Drive... 4-5 minute boot time? Ouch. Seriously, this reminds me of a LiveCD of some kind. I love the idea and think that some people will find the H2 invaluable, but to me it just doesn't seem very practical.

Poor choice of name

[tepples]

The name "H2" definitely doesn't scream "efficient" to a lot of people. In fact, another product called "H2", a gas-guzzling SUV designed as a military-style façade on a Chevy Tahoe engine, has shown itself to be worthy of the F-bomb: Fsck you and the Hummer you rode in on.

Meaning of Ubuntu

[threaded]

I thought Ubuntu meant "Can't install Gentoo"?

Re:Meaning of Ubuntu

[outZider]

"No one wants to spend a week installing an operating system." :)

Great, but not the first distribution to do so

[plankrwf]

Nice idea, from Ubuntu. But they are certainly not the first. Of course, there is Knoppix , which runs Live from a CD. It might be made ready for USB stick also. And there are other distributions that fit on and are build for a 128Mb USB stick; for instance 'Damn Small Linux' ( DSL ), which only takes 50Mb of space...

USB Live HDD

[ebooher]

Another thing people could do if a machine doesn't have a BIOS that is USB boot friendly is mirror the /boot structure on a 3" mini-cdr and keep that in the case with the drive. Set the Live CD up so that it seeks out the USB drive for /usr /home /etc partitions.

The $140 price tag is a little steep for me to have something I'd only use as a toy, though. With USB keys as cheap as they are right now, I'm not sure how well the market will accept this today.

Blackdog

[drrjv]

Doesn't the Blackdog Server do it even better?

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

When you can't reboot? Portable Apps

[CritterNYC]

I like the idea of taking along a full OS on a portable drive. They should consider adding a virtual machine that runs under Windows and can boot it. Then, you can use it in locations where rebooting would be an issue (internet cafes, at work, on mom's PC).

Until something like that comes along... and doesn't have a 5 minute startup timeframe... I'll stick to Portable Apps.

(Full disclosure: Yes, that's my website.)

Kinda stupid

[xenocide2]

From what I can tell this is just some retail company that decided to throw in one of those free Ubuntu discs with a microdrive, rather than anything officially supported by Ubuntu / Cannoical. Still interesting, but a little bit less newsworthy when you discover that a) the "pre-installed" OS is not pre-installed, and b) it takes 4 minutes to boot.

When you look at the graph, you see that you're getting less than 10MB/sec. Two questions: what are the numbers on the bottom referring to, and why does the graph look like it does? Is there some caching mechanism going on?

Device drivers

[d1rty_d0gg_]

This would be a cool idea if the distro supported a sufficiently large number of device drivers. That way you could boot off this USB drive and expect all the hardware on the host to be discovered. Knoppix would be the ideal choice for this sort of a thing. IBM tried something similar [slashdot.org] with Knoppix to allow users to carry the state of their OS around on portable storage.

Puppy

[HermanAB]

3GB??? What the heck? That is small, cheap and convenient nowadays?

Puppy Linux runs off a 128MB USB memory stick. That is 24 times smaller and it also does everything you need and it boots about 10 times faster too.

Mediocre Experience

[Seumas]

I'm been a Debian-only guy since early 2002 and when it was time to get a new laptop, I decided to go with Ubuntu, because of that "heritage". Unfortunately, it still had a lot of problems that are not entirely due to Ubuntu itself. Problems such as it never remembering the wifi card and network, so it'd have to be setup every time you logged into Ubuntu. Problems like there not being any solid driver's for the graphics card (unless you wanted 2D only - even screensavers chugged the 2.4ghz, 2gb RAM, 128mb ATI 9800 system down to a crawl.

There were a number of other issues, too. In the end, I wiped it and gave it to my brother as a Windows system for school. I could probably have resolved all the little issues with a bunch of elbow grease, but I don't have that kind of time and thought maybe Ubuntu was ready for prime-time easier-than-redhat installation. (Or at least, what I'm told is easy -- I haven't used Redhat except for a couple months back in 1997).

All in all, I was impressed with Ubuntu and I think it shows great promise of all the current desktop distros. And frankly, as long as you still have apt-get, what's not to like? :)

Re:Mediocre Experience

[Rakishi]

"128mb ATI 9800 system"

ATI is well known to have shitty Linux drivers, if you wish to complain then please send a letter to ATI asking them to make better linux drivers. In general, for desktop linux you need to pick hardware which will work with it.

The Ubuntu H2 can be ordered online here.

[herve76]

The Ubuntu H2 is on sale at: http://www.zinside.com/index.php?main_page=product _info&products_id=46

This is a nifty idea, but not really practical

[WestCanadaCitizen.ca]

I love Ubuntu and I've ran it on my desktop and my notebook for almost a year now without a hitch, but I don't see the upside to using it for this application. Portable units like this are generally used for rescue service or showing off Linux to would be converts. And although Ubuntu has good hardware support, etc. it's not an overly zippy distro to begin with so running it off of a USB hard drive is going to slow it down so much that anyone watching you wait for 4 minutes to boot up your new, supposedly better OS is going to laugh at you and run back to Windows (especially when they see the default Ubuntu theme). As far as rescue service goes, Knothing Beats Knoppix. So I'm just wondering what niche this would fit into.

Re:This is a nifty idea, but not really practical

[bcrowell]

I don't see the upside to using it for this application
Say I'm traveling, and I don't want to lug a laptop with me. With this thing, I could run emacs, gimp, etc., in internet cafes or at friends' houses.

And although Ubuntu has good hardware support, etc. it's not an overly zippy distro to begin with so running it off of a USB hard drive is going to slow it down so much that anyone watching you wait for 4 minutes to boot up your new, supposedly better OS is going to laugh at you and run back to Windows (especially when they see the default Ubuntu theme).
Last time I tried Knoppix, the performance wasn't any better than what they're quoting in this article.

It's going to be really cool when CD drives and/or USB drives like this get fast enough that there's no longer any performance hit. It could really make a drastic change in the way we think about using computers. Computers could become interchangeable utility boxes.

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[bcrowell]

A: Hey, thanks for letting my stay at your place while I'm here in town. I really appreciate it.

B: No problem, it's great to get a chance to get together. The spare bed's all made up.

A: Oh yeah, could I use your computer tonight? I have some work I need to do.

B: Yeah, no problem.

A: I have all my data here on this keychain drive. Do you have Gimp, Scribus, emacs, pdftk, ImageMagick, and Inkscape installed?

B: Huh? No.

A: Oh, no problem, it'll just take a few minutes to install them with apt-get.

B: Apt-what?

A: Oh, you don't run Debian? That's cool, what distro do you use?

B: Windows XP.

A: Oh...I guess I'll go out and buy copies of Photoshop, PageMaker, InDesign, and Illustrator to install on your machine. Shouldn't be more than a thousand bucks, total, and I don't think it'll be too much work to convert all the files, work on them, and convert them back again.

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[say]

Could I suggest a USB stick with Firefox for windows binaries, configured to run with the profile directory on the stick; bash for windows and putty.exe? It would fit on a 32MB stick, depending on what your few utilities are. It would run a minimal GUI, Windows' is kinda minimal until Vista hits gold.

Nice one

[FishandChips]

Kudos to the developers. I guess this is more for experimenters and early adopters but it's great to see. There are surely going to be a great many experiments along these lines in the next few years. Whover gets the paradigm right is going to be making billions, most likely: intelligent key -> dumb terminal -> network -> master server running back the apps, with everything just the way you like it from your preferences data. As with mobile phones, I guess the keys/thumb drives would end up being almost given away to secure a monthly network subscription. Hmmn, tasty. Flash memory will need to change and improve first, though. We'll need masses of it, and cheap.

Re:You have to REALLY hate windows

[darkwhite]

Actually, that's what laptops are for

Mepis on the go

[twitter]

Mepis on the go uses a CD for the OS and USB for your home. This way, you get a fat distribution and a big writable space. The penalty is speed, which Puppy overcomes.

The more options you have, the better things are.

Time

[solarlips]

I used to be a Linux advocate / snob citing stability and coolness as my reasons for using it. Honestly, I find that Linux holds me back from doing simple things that I take for granted on Windows. To get many apps to properly run I needed to download its package making sure that I installed the correct dependencies beforehand. I was definitely not a Linux power user, more of an advanced beginner. (Yes, I know there are programs to resolve the dependency issue automatically.)

Open Office just seems to lag compared to Microsoft Office, and its memory utilization is huge. I'm also an avid porn junky; when I was using Linux trying to playback various media types was a pain, downloading appropriate packages again... and every so often not having a certain media supported. With Media Player I can do everything with 1 hand!

I haven't played with Linux for a while, but until I find a distribution that has a great office package and media player I won't be switching. Tom's Hardware cites instability... as a reason to use Linux; Win XP seems to be pretty darn stable when I use it. The time that it takes to setup a Linux distribution and get the same feel for it that I have with Windows would amount to a lot more time than the time I'm setback by Windows crashing. Plus a 4 minute boot time with this Ubuntu / H2 setup is nuts.

This is where OSX bridges the gap, a commonplace OS with standards and the benefit of Unix. I can run Microsoft Word and have the ability to compile just about any Linux app. Maybe Microsoft should take a similar move as Apple did in developing OSX. Completely redo their OS and base it on BSD... create a good emulator (Wine like) to appease software developers for the meantime and stray away from the old Win32 development stuff. This way they could corral the whole Unix / Linux threat and create an OS that appeals to all parties. Then again why should the dominant player by leaps and bounds in any industry have to do something so massive, they don't have to.